Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World’s Most Famous Detective Writer by Margalit Fox

George Mason University - Antonin Scalia Law School, Faculty; The Green Bag

Date Written: January 12, 2019

Abstract

Let us be clear up front: You will enjoy and appreciate Margalit Fox’s Conan Doyle for the Defense. It is an intellectually engaging, historically enlightening, thought-provoking page-turner in which Fox (the long-time, just-retired Obituaries editor of the New York Times) weaves together two enthralling stories. Both spring from the brutal death-by-blunt-instrument of Marion Gilchrist in her Glasgow, Scotland, apartment on December 21, 1908. The first story chronicles an appalling 20-year run of incompetence and dishonesty by officers of the law — police, prosecutors, and judges. And they were not alone. They had the help of mendacious witnesses and biased experts. This travesty of justice began in the winter of 1908-09 with the Glasgow police force’s hurried, ad hoc framing of Oscar Slater for the murder of Gilchrist. Next it zipped speedily into the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh for a kangaroo-court prosecution of Slater in early May 1909. Then it slowed to a crawl as it ground through his long imprisonment from 1909 to 1927, during which high government officials repeatedly exerted themselves to ignore or even cover up the failures and evil-doing that ran through the investigation, prosecution, and imprisonment from beginning to end. The second story — a tale of inspiring intelligence, integrity, and courage — is about the long struggle to undo the first story. Its highlights include a noble but unsuccessful attempt by an honest cop to expose the frame-up, a brilliant debunking of the case against Slater by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and, finally, the successful campaign by Doyle and others to free Slater from prison.

Davies, Ross E., Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World’s Most Famous Detective Writer by Margalit Fox (January 12, 2019). Saturday Review of Literature, Jan. 12, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3316277

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